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Bashiok responded to a poster that noticed, in the Diablo III trailer, that the Barbarian found an axe on an item drop, while the Witch Doctor found a short staff. When asked if item drops are now class specific, Bashiok replied:We don't want to bias the drop system into only giving you items you want or can use, it would be a trading and economic killer. We want to encourage trading and encourage people to see worth in items even if they can't use them - give them to friends, use them for other characters, sell them, trade them, etc.

Along those lines but somewhat off-topic we do now have some restrictions on weapon types usable by each class. It's been part of the game for a while now. Allowing every class to use every weapon type was actually going to require a huge amount of time and effort and it would have meant cutting out or cutting into other features. We evaluated really how often people would want to have their class holding a weapon type that (traditionally) contradicted their class-style versus that work going in to other features - specifically having a lot more skills and a lot more skill-rune effects. We made the obvious choice which is making sure there are a ton of awesome skills and rune effects to choose from.

Because I can see the conclusions being jumped to RIGHT NOW in my old cranium - let me state that weapon types do not dictate stats. At least not wholly (barbarians can't use staves so there's no point in allowing fury related stats on them). We understand that the game is about variation, customization, and experimentation in class builds. We're not World of Warcraft, we're not looking to make weapon stats "optimal" for the types and classes that will use them. Which is to say, we're not going to put specific stats in specific amounts on each weapon of a specific type because we're making assumptions about what each class wants out of their stats. We want variation, and experimentation, and all that good stuff. These restrictions don't affect those goals, it really just means you probably won't see a wizard lugging around a two-handed axe. Kind of a bummer, but then think about what it affords us to work on with more and better looking skills, a more robust rune-skill system, etc. We want to spend our time and effort on what makes sense to making the game better. Source

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say you do want to support a melee wiz build with gear: are you going to have weapons and armor that can still support that kind of gameplay?IE, if you are looking for melee modifiers that generally appear on 2H weapons, and you can't equip a 2H weapon, will some kind of similar modifier show up on a 1H that the wiz can equip?

Our intention isn't to limit build potential by limiting what weapon types each class can use, and I attempted to explain that in my original post. So yes, we want to have a large variation of stats on all weapons to allow for experimentation and "off-build" customization.

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Are you planning on restricting armor choices similarly?

There still aren't any armor restriction planned. Armor is a different issue as it's shown in much the same was as Diablo II, so more types don't actually increase the animation/modeling costs like weapon types would.

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First: Will the cutting out of certain weapon types only relate to those weapons which are really antithetical to the archetype of the class, but still leave some wriggle-room? For example, will my wizard be unable to wield the massive two-hander, but still be able to swing a longsword?

The list of what weapon types are or aren't allowed for each class aren't final and could change. They're fairly logical choices and what is most commonly seen as closely tied to the hero archetypes. In our current game the wizard can't wield a two-handed sword for instance, but can still use a one handed sword and shield if so desired.

When asked if it was possible for restrictions to change, Bashiok replied:

Bashiok addressed a poster that was concerned that the difficulty of Diablo III may not be hard enough for experienced players. Although the poster seemed to answer his own question, coming to his own conclusion that difficulty will probably be progressive, Bashiok replied:A gradual progression of difficulty is the most logical approach for ensuring that the game is fun, and isn't prohibitive or frustrating to players of any experience level or knowledge.

You seem to come to the same conclusion yourself, yet you disregard the logic of it because... Source